The Lily Jean sinks in frigid waters, and Gloucester is once again a fishing community in mourning

GLOUCESTER — This city of hardy fishermen knows grief all too well. Inscribed on the seawall along the harbor are the names of thousands who set out from the country's oldest fishing port over the centuries and never returned. On Friday, seven more were lost in the frigid waters of the Atlantic.

Since then, the people of Gloucester have been coming to their Fisherman's Memorial — a bronze statue of a skipper clutching the wheel of his boat as he faces the open ocean — to leave flowers and mourn these fresh losses. The scene is a somber reminder of how dangerous commercial fishing can be.

"It's just really hard — really hard for everybody," said Brek Beard, who stopped by the memorial Monday as the sun was setting. He was a longtime friend of the captain of the Lily Jean, Accursio “Gus” Sanfilippo, a seasoned and respected skipper from Gloucester.

"He was a good man. I remember him when he was just a kid," said Beard, recalling Sanfilippo not only as an experienced captain but also as a good carpenter and a "hard worker."

The U.S. Coast Guard has launched a formal investigation into the sinking of the 72-foot fishing vessel, which went down this past Friday, 25 miles off the coast of Cape Ann. All seven crew members were lost and are presumed dead; one body was recovered — Sanfilippo's.

Beard says it will take time for this close-knit city to recover from the loss of the Lily Jean.

"Everybody pretty much knows everybody or they're related somehow," he said.

"I'm in shock," said Maryann Perry, who stopped by the Fisherman's Memorial with her sister, Paula Burns. "It's a tragedy. I feel like I lost part of my family," she said.

The two sisters said they didn't know any of those who died, but as the daughters of a Gloucester fisherman who survived a number of near-misses on the water, they said they know what the families left behind are going through.

"We understand the dangers of fishing," Perry said. "You can be the best captain, but the sea will always take you over."

It's not clear what caused the Lily Jean to sink, but it apparently happened fast. There was no radio communication from the boat — only a signal from the emergency beacon, which activates automatically.

A search all day Friday into Saturday morning found no survivors in the ice-cold waters. Ultimately, Captain Jamie Frederick, commander of Coast Guard Sector Boston, gave the update nobody wanted to hear.

"I believe there is no longer a reasonable expectation that anyone could have survived this long," Frederick announced Saturday afternoon.

Now, the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board will try to figure out what happened to the Lily Jean. On Monday, state Sen. Bruce Tarr of Gloucester urged people to avoid speculation and said the investigation will eventually reveal some answers about what he called "an unthinkable tragedy."

"We're dealing with the forces of nature," Tarr said at a press conference in Gloucester on Monday. Struggling to contain his emotions, he added, "We will never be able to say that it won't happen again. But when we go to sleep at night, we want to be able to say that we did everything in our power to minimize that chance."

At that same press conference, Vito Giacalone, policy director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, addressed a question on many laypeople's minds: should the Lily Jean have been out fishing in last weekend's freezing winter weather?

Giacalone said the crew wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary — they were doing what fishermen do in winter.

"I've heard people say, why do they go fishing in that weather?" Giacalone said.

The answer, he said, is the same reason electric company workers go out in the middle of a blizzard "to turn the lights back on." It's a risk fishermen take every day, "especially in winter," he said.

That stark truth is clear in a particularly cold stretch of winter on the water north of Boston.

"It's one of the most dangerous, treacherous jobs anyone can do," said Alisa Harding, of Gloucester, after laying a bouquet of flowers beneath the monument.

"I feel for all of them. I just hope that they're all at peace," she said.